Relations Between Alphabetized Name Order and Nomination Counts in Peer Nomination Measures

Peer nominations, a central method for measuring peer relationships in developmental research, typically involve asking children or adolescents to choose peers who fit various criteria from an alphabetized roster of classmates or grade‐mates. Although such measures have been used for decades, very little research has investigated the effects of alphabetical name order on the number of nominations received by peers. This study collected peer nominations for 20 items among 607 eighth grade participants in two schools. Regression analyses showed that earlier name order significantly predicted higher nomination counts for eight of the items, and explained over 5 percent of the variance in four affective variables (friendship, acceptance, acquaintanceship, and received liking). Across variables, name order effects were negatively correlated with internal reliability of nominations, implying that order effects may be related to the consensus of the peer group. Name order also had a minimal effect on inter‐correlations among a subset of variables. Implications and concrete recommendations for controlling and reducing name order effects in future research are discussed.     

The Relation Between Therapeutic Alliance and Treatment Motivation in Residential Youth Care: A Cross-Lagged Panel Analysis

This study investigated the longitudinal relation between therapeutic alliance and treatment motivation in a sample of 174 adolescents receiving residential treatment in the Netherlands. Structural equation modeling with a cross-lagged panel design was used to examine the relation between therapeutic alliance and treatment motivation up to 9 months of treatment. Results revealed that autoregressive associations between initial therapeutic alliance and alliance at subsequent time points were significant, whereas for treatment motivation a significant association was found after 6 months, but not after 9 months. Results also showed that a higher level of therapeutic alliance after 3 months was predictive of a higher level of treatment motivation after 6 months. Furthermore, a higher level of therapeutic alliance after 6 months was predictive of a higher level of treatment motivation after 9 months. Implications for research and clinical practice are discussed.     

Difficulties in Emotion Regulation as a Mediator of the Relationship Between Child Sexual Abuse Victimization and Sexual Aggression Perpetration in Male College Students

Although numerous studies document a link between child sexual abuse and later sexual assault perpetration in men, little research has examined why this relationship exists. One potential mechanism may be emotional regulation difficulties. The current study utilizes a college sample of 132 men to examine the mediating role of emotion regulation difficulties on the relationship between experiencing child sexual abuse and later sexual aggression. Although emotion regulation difficulties in general was not significantly related to sexual aggression, one facet, impulse control difficulties, emerged as a significant mediator of the relationship between child sexual abuse and sexual aggression. Intervention programs should focus on the care that children receive following sexual abuse, with particular emphasis on how emotion regulation abilities may be impacted.     

Some Results Based on a Version of the Generalized Dynamic Entropies

We propose new dynamic measures of uncertainty based on the notion of generalized dynamic entropy introduced in Di Crescenzo and Longobardi (2006). These can uniquely determine distribution functions in continuous and discrete cases, and the characterizations of some well-known distributions are provided. We also define some orderings and aging notions based on the generalized dynamic measures, and prove some of their properties, obtaining as corollaries results that have recently appeared in the literature.     

Longitudinal Links between Adolescent and Peer Conduct Problems and Moderation by a Sensitivity Genetic Index

The most extensively studied influence on adolescent conduct problem behaviors is peers, and the literature points to genetics as one source of individual differences in peer influence. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that an environmental sensitivity genetic index comprised of DRD4, 5‐HTTLPR, and GABRA2 variation would moderate the association between peer and adolescent conduct problems. Latent growth modeling was applied to PROSPER project longitudinal data from adolescents and their peers. Results showed the hypothesis was supported; adolescents with more copies of putative sensitivity alleles were more strongly influenced by their peers. The interaction form was consistent with differential susceptibility in follow‐up analyses. Strengths and weaknesses of genetic aggregates for sensitivity research are discussed.     

Identifying Changing Aviation Threat Environments Within an Adaptive Homeland Security Advisory System

A critical component of aviation security consists of screening passengers and baggage to protect airports and aircraft from terrorist threats. Advancements in screening device technology have increased the ability to detect these threats; however, specifying the operational configurations of these devices in response to changes in the threat environment can become difficult. This article proposes to use Fisher information as a statistical measure for detecting changes in the threat environment. The perceived risk of passengers, according to prescreening information and behavior analysis, is analyzed as the passengers sequentially enter the security checkpoint. The alarm responses from the devices used to detect threats are also analyzed to monitor significant changes in the frequency of threat items uncovered. The key results are that this information‐based measure can be used within the Homeland Security Advisory System to indicate changes in threat conditions in real time, and provide the flexibility of security screening detection devices to responsively and automatically adapt operational configurations to these changing threat conditions.     

The Longitudinal Relationships Between Basic Psychological Needs Satisfaction at School and School-Related Subjective Well-Being in Adolescents

Situated within a positive psychology perspective, this study aimed at examining the nature and directionality of longitudinal relationships between basic psychological needs satisfaction at school and adolescents’ school-related subjective well-being. A total of 576 students (40.5 male and 36.8 % students in junior high school) completed measures of adolescent students’ basic psychological needs at school and school-related subjective well-being at two time points, 6 weeks apart. Cross-lagged structural equation modeling showed significant bidirectional longitudinal relationships between autonomy, relatedness, and competence needs satisfaction and school satisfaction. Furthermore, significant bidirectional relationships were observed between competence need satisfaction and positive affect in school. The findings provided important evidence of the roles of adolescents’ different types of needs satisfaction, experienced specifically during school, in adolescents’ school-related subjective well-being. The findings also helped extend the positive psychology perspective to the relatively neglected context of education.     

An Additive–Multiplicative Restricted Mean Residual Life Model

The mean residual life measures the expected remaining life of a subject who has survived up to a particular time. When survival time distribution is highly skewed or heavy tailed, the restricted mean residual life must be considered. In this paper, we propose an additive–multiplicative restricted mean residual life model to study the association between the restricted mean residual life function and potential regression covariates in the presence of right censoring. This model extends the proportional mean residual life model using an additive model as its covariate dependent baseline. For the suggested model, some covariate effects are allowed to be time‐varying. To estimate the model parameters, martingale estimating equations are developed, and the large sample properties of the resulting estimators are established. In addition, to assess the adequacy of the model, we investigate a goodness of fit test that is asymptotically justified. The proposed methodology is evaluated via simulation studies and further applied to a kidney cancer data set collected from a clinical trial.